A look at how we turned a single-crop passionfruit field into a diverse, productive food forest on São Miguel — bananas, fruit trees, pollinator habitats, and living soil.
We turned a passionfruit monoculture into a regenerative food forest. The field that once grew one crop in clean rows — and depended on outside inputs to keep producing — is becoming something else entirely. A diverse, productive ecosystem designed to grow food, build soil, increase biodiversity, and create abundance across the seasons rather than within a single one.
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The passionfruit didn't go anywhere. It's still the income crop, still the most visible plant in the field. What changed is everything around it. Bananas, corn, tomatoes, fruit trees, biomass plants, and pollinator habitats now grow alongside the passionfruit in a layered system where every species has a role.
The result is an agroforestry system in motion. Each layer supports the next. The bananas create shade and humidity that other species need to establish. The biomass plants build the soil. The corn and tomatoes produce in their own cycle. The pollinator habitats invite the workforce that keeps everything else productive. And the passionfruit, no longer the lone tenant of the field, is healthier than it was when it was the only thing growing.
"Diversity isn't a complication. It's how the system stops needing you."
What you see in the video is the visible layer of something deeper. The work is built on a few principles we come back to constantly:
Diversity replaces dependence on monoculture. Living soil replaces the need for synthetic inputs. The farm gets healthier and more productive as a single connected organism instead of as a collection of isolated crops fighting for resources.
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After the food forest tour, the video takes you across the rest of VIVA Quinta — the food forest, the tropical fruit trees, the traditional Azorean pineapple houses, the coffee plantings, the gardens, and the guest accommodations that sit inside all of it. The point of the property is the connection between every part of it. The food forest isn't a section of the farm. It's the farm.
Whether you're interested in sustainable farming, food forest design, eco-tourism, or just looking for a different kind of place to stay in the Azores, this video is a way to see how agriculture, hospitality, nature, and community come together at VIVA Quinta.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to follow the food forest as it grows – or come stay with us and walk it yourself.